The stylization is decent, and your control of the digital medium really helps too accentuate the the strong points (such as the profile, the ears and the front of the shirt) and to hide any of the weaker points.

The white background is what bugs me the most. It looks more like you scanned in a sketch, and tried to clean up any specks with a white brush. I can understand that you were going for a more painterly feel as opposed to a harsh white background.

A harsh white background would not benefit the painting, so I think that you made a good choice. Just work to make it a little less random, and it will work wonderfully.

I'd take another look at the birds, though. They look good, certainly, but they're all over the place perspective wise.

Also, though you're exaggerated your character quite a bit, I think his hunch back might be over blown. The mark making in the hair looks really good, but I have a suggestion:

If you do end up wanting a more blended style of coloring, you might try moving away from photoshop and into other programs (Paint Tool Sai, Painter) simply because PShop is lacking in this regard (in my opinion). I think it works for you, and you'll only improve with time, but I always suggest this to people who may not be familiar with other paint programs.

your right looking at the birds i definitely need to go back and draw them in perspective, the horizon would be pretty high up so I guess you should be seeing a lot more of the top of their heads and backs. I'm playing around with it now seeing what he'd look like less hunched back.

I've always used photoshop for digital painting but kind of want to try painter

Maybe try using the selection tool to move them around/twist them until they appear to all be standing on a flat surface.

And there isn't anything wrong with photoshop per-se, and plenty of artists use it, but when it comes to painting organic figures I refuse to use it. Photoshop is great at many things, and it can do practically anything, but for me I found it much easier to paint human skin in paint tool sai and painter because of the way the materials blend realistically. You can still achieve great things in pshop, and it has far more options, but I will always export my drawings over to sai to paint skin and cloth before going back to pshop. I like softer coloring more, though, so your mileage may vary.

The guy looks like a dwarf. I understand you're trying to exaggerate the features, but the legs are tiny and the ribcage is huge. The proportions don't make any sense. It also looks like you were afraid to add a background.